"Perhaps there is not in Nature a more exhilarating sight, or one more strongly exciting to confidence in God, than the rise of the Nile. Day by day and night by night, its turbid tide sweeps onward majestically over the parched sands of the waste, howling wilderness. Almost hourly, as we slowly ascended it before the Etesian wind, we heard the thundering fall of some mud-bank, and saw, by the rush of all animated Nature to the spot, that the Nile had overleapt another obstruction, and that its bounding waters were diffusing life and joy through another desert. There are few impressions I ever received upon the remembrance of which I dwell with more pleasure than that of seeing the first burst of the Nile into one of the great channels of its annual overflow. All Nature shouts for joy. The men, the children, the buffaloes, gambol in its refreshing waters, the broad waves sparkle with shoals of fish, and fowl of every wing flutter over them in clouds. Nor is this jubilee of Nature confined to the higher orders of creation. The moment the sand becomes moistened by the approach of the fertilising waters, it is literally alive with insects innumerable. It is impossible to stand by the side of one of these noble streams, to see it every moment sweeping away some obstruction to its majestic course, and widening as it flows, without feeling the heart to expand with love and joy and confidence in the great Author of this annual miracle of mercy." [Illustration: DIFFERENT FORMS OF THOTH.] After the flood comes the sowing time. The effects of the inundation, as Osborn shows in another place, "exhibit themselves in a scene of fertility and beauty such as will scarcely be found in another country at any season of the year. The vivid green of the springing corn, the groves of pomegranate-trees ablaze with the rich scarlet of their blossoms, the fresh breeze laden with the perfumes of gardens of roses and orange thickets, every tree and every shrub covered with sweet-scented flowers. These are a few of the natural beauties that welcome the stranger to the land of Ham. There is considerable sameness in them, it is true, for he would observe little variety in the trees and plants, whether he first entered Egypt by the gardens of Alexandria or the plain of Assouan. Yet is it the same everywhere, only because it would be impossible to make any addition to the sweetness of the odours, the brilliancy of the colours, or the exquisite beauty of the many forms of vegetable life, in the midst of which he wanders. It is monotonous, but it is the monotony of Paradise." The flood reaches Cairo on a day closely approximating to that of the Summer Solstice. It attains its greatest height, and begins to decline near the Autumnal Equinox. By the Winter Solstice the Nile has again subsided within its banks and resumed its blue colour. Seed-time has occurred in this interval. Beginning with the inundation (Summer Solstice) we have--